I'm not nobody, who are you?

 1. Say to yourself: “I am having a flashback”. Flashbacks take you into a timeless part of the psyche that feels as helpless, hopeless and surrounded by danger as you were in childhood. The feelings and sensations you are experiencing are past memories that cannot hurt you now.

2. Remind yourself: “I feel afraid but I am not in danger! I am safe now, here in the present.” Remember you are now in the safety of the present, far from the danger of the past.

3. Own your right/need to have boundaries. Remind yourself that you do not have to allow anyone to mistreat you; you are free to leave dangerous situations and protest unfair behavior.

4. Speak reassuringly to the Inner Child. The child needs to know that you love her/him unconditionally– that s/he can come to you for comfort and protection when s/he feels lost and scared.

5. Deconstruct eternity thinking. In childhood, fear and abandonment felt endless – a safer future was unimaginable. Remember this flashback will pass as it always has before.

6. Remind yourself that you are in an adult body with allies, skills and resources to protect you that you never had as a child. [Feeling small and fragile is a sign of a flashback.]

7. Ease back into your body. Fear launches you into “heady” worrying, or numbing and spacing out. 

[a] Gently ask your body to Relax: feel each of your major muscle groups and softly encourage them to relax. [Tightened muscles send false danger signals to your brain.]

[b] Breathe deeply and slowly. [Holding your breath also signals danger.]

[c] Slow down: rushing presses your brain’s flight response button.

[d] Find a safe place to unwind and soothe yourself: wrap yourself in a blanket, hold a pillow or a stuffed animal, lie down on your bed or in a closet or in a bath; take a nap.

[e] Feel the fear in your body without reacting to it. Fear is just an energy in your body. It cannot hurt you if you do not run from it.

8. Resist the Inner Critic’s Drasticizing and Catastrophizing.

[a] Use Thought-stopping to halt the critic’s endless exaggerations of danger, and its constant planning to control the uncontrollable. Refuse to shame, hate or abandon yourself. Channel the anger of self- attack into saying “NO” to your critic’s unfair self-criticism.

[b] Use Thought-substitution & Thought-correction to replace negative thinking with a memorized list of your qualities and accomplishments.

9. Allow yourself to grieve. Flashbacks are opportunities to release old, unexpressed feelings of fear, hurt, and abandonment. Validate and soothe your child’s past experience of helplessness and hopelessness. Healthy grieving can turn your tears into self-compassion and your anger into self-protection.

10. Cultivate safe relationships and seek support. Take time alone when you need it, but don’t let shame isolate you. Feeling shame doesn’t mean you are shameful. Educate your intimates about flashbacks and ask them to help you talk and feel your way through them.

11. Learn to identify the types of triggers that lead to flashbacks. Avoid unsafe people, places, activities and triggering mental processes. Practice preventive maintenance with these steps when triggering situations are unavoidable.

12. Figure out what you are flashing back to. Flashbacks are opportunities to discover, validate and heal your wounds from past abuse and abandonment. They also point to your still unmet developmental needs and can provide you with motivation to get them met.

13. Be patient with a slow recovery process. It takes time in the present to become deadrenalized, and considerable time in the future to gradually decrease the intensity, duration and frequency of flashbacks. Real recovery is a gradually progressive process [often two steps forward, one step back], not an attained salvation fantasy. Don’t beat yourself up for having a flashback.

ASPD and NPD are not indicative of morality or kindness.

We need to address the unfair stigma that people with cluster B personalities face, but in a way that doesn't invalidate or attack victims of narcissistic abuse (AKA people with narcissistic victim syndrome [NVS]).

I suffered more than 20 years of narcissistic abuse at the hands of a parent and then at the hands of an intimate partner. They were abusers who were also narcissists, and they used a very specific pattern of manipulation and mistreatment.

It was not because of their narcissism, but it was influenced by it.

Narcissistic abuse is real.

It's similar to the phrase "domestic abuse" as opposed to only using the term "abuse". "Domestic" is not an inherently bad word or negative in any way, it's an adjective being used to denote a specific type of abuse/situation.

THIS

it was my obsession for all of 2020. it was what i was reading up and watching videos on like 24/7.

it's important to clarify that narcissism is really just a spectrum that all of us exist on.

narcissism isn't inherently bad, but the higher you are up on the spectrum, the less empathy you have and the closer you are to full-blown narcissistic personality disorder. these things lead to inevitable abusive behaviour, because these types do not give a fuck about anyone but themselves and having power.

so when people use the word narcissist these days, it's important to understand what they really mean. because there's a big difference between someone who loves social media and taking selfies, and someone who is very selfish, lacks empathy and is abusive.

narcissistic personality disorder is supposed to be rare, but it's hard to say when people who suffer from the dark triad personality types (narcs, sociopath, psychopath) are the least likely to ever get treatment or evaluated as they think they are perfect and god's gift.

but disorder or not, narcissistic abuse can be carried out by anyone. so it's also important to not become too obsessed or focused (as i once was) on whether someone is a true narcissist or not. the real focus should be on how people treat you.

and the glossary of narcissistic abuse is something i think everyone (maybe except abusive people) should be familiarized with. gaslighting is the most popular term that many people now know, and therefore recognize more easily.

narcissistic abuse needs its own glossary in order to specifically recognize emotional abuse. because for some people, emotional abuse can be hard to catch or describe, making it seem less real, which can further normalize or minimize those experiences.

not to mention, emotional abuse is often taken less seriously than physical abuse, when in reality, the invisible wounds of emotional abuse run much deeper and sometime more permanently. it's nice to be able to put a name to all these abusive behaviours and tactics so you can really point it out and be confident in your reality.

Parents can be loving and teach you important things and still be toxic. My mother taught me how to work hard, have manners, and appreciate things in life. She also showed me what emotional abuse, gaslighting, and manipulation are.

DO NOT FEEL GUILTY FOR SETTING BOUNDARIES!

You are not the only one who struggles with this. People are complex and there is no clear-cut black-and-white way to categorize anyone. You can love them, and even appreciate them, and still need distance and boundaries.

YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR CHOICES! If your parents hurt your relationship with them to the point that you mentally and emotionally cannot handle being close with them then you are not responsible for rebuilding the bridges they set on fire.